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All week she thought of things she wished to say to him. High, improving things. She began to admit that she was lonely without him. Then she was afraid.

It was at the Baptist church supper, a week after the picnic, that she saw him again. She had gone with Kennicott and Aunt Bessie to the supper, which was spread on oilcloth-covered and trestle-supported tables in the church basement. Erik was helping Myrtle Cass to fill coffee cups for the waitresses. The congregation had doffed their piety. Children tumbled under the tables, and Deacon Pierson greeted the women with a rolling, “Where’s Brother Jones, sister, where’s Brother Jones? Not going to be with us tonight? Well, you tell Sister Perry to hand you a plate, and make ’em give you enough oyster pie!”

Erik shared in the cheerfulness. He laughed with Myrtle, jogged her elbow when she was filling cups, made deep mock bows to the waitresses as they came up for coffee. Myrtle was enchanted by his humor. From the other end of the room, a matron among matrons, Carol observed Myrtle, and hated her, and caught herself at it. “To be jealous of a wooden-faced village girl!” But she kept it up. She detested Erik; gloated over his gaucheries—his “breaks,” she called them. When he was too expressive, too much like a Russian dancer, in saluting Deacon Pierson, Carol had the ecstasy of pain in seeing the deacon’s sneer. When, trying to talk to three girls at once, he dropped a cup and effeminately wailed, “Oh dear!” she sympathized with—and ached over—the insulting secret glances of the girls.

From meanly hating him she rose to compassion as she saw that his eyes begged every one to like him. She perceived how inaccurate her judgments could be. At the picnic she had fancied that Maud Dyer looked upon Erik too sentimentally, and she had snarled, “I hate these married women who cheapen themselves and feed on boys.” But at the supper Maud was one of the waitresses; she bustled with platters of cake, she was pleasant to old women; and to Erik she gave no attention at all. Indeed, when she had her own supper, she joined the Kennicotts, and how ludicrous it was to suppose that Maud was a gourmet of emotions Carol saw in the fact that she talked not to one of the town beaux but to the safe Kennicott himself.

When Carol glanced at Erik again she discovered that Mrs. Bogart had an eye on her. It was a shock to know that at last there was something which could make her afraid of Mrs. Bogart’s spying.

“What am I doing? Am I in love with Erik? Unfaithful? I? I want youth but I don’t want him—I mean, I don’t want youth—enough to break up my life. I must get out of this. Quick.”

She said to Kennicott on their way home, “Will! I want to run away for a few days. Wouldn’t you like to skip down to Chicago?”

“Still be pretty hot there. No fun in a big city till winter. What do you want to go for?”

“People! To occupy my mind. I want stimulus.”

“Stimulus?” He spoke good-naturedly. “Who’s been feeding you meat? You got that ‘stimulus’ out of one of these fool stories about wives that don’t know when they’re well off. Stimulus! Seriously, though, to cut out the jollying, I can’t get away.”

“Then why don’t I run off by myself?”

“Why—’Tisn’t the money, you understand. But what about Hugh?”

“Leave him with Aunt Bessie. It would be just for a few days.”

“I don’t think much of this business of leaving kids around. Bad for ’em.”

“So you don’t think—”

“I’ll tell you: I think we better stay put till after the war. Then we’ll have a dandy long trip. No, I don’t think you better plan much about going away now.”

So she was thrown at Erik.

III

She awoke at ebb-time, at three of the morning, woke sharply and fully; and sharply and coldly as her father pronouncing sentence on a cruel swindler she gave judgment:

“A pitiful and tawdry love-affair.

“No splendor, no defiance. A self-deceived little woman whispering in corners with a pretentious little man.

“No, he is not. He is fine. Aspiring. It’s not